Hodag photo by Gourami Watcher - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28838534

In this short episode, I discuss the hodag. It's a cryptid that's put Rhinelander, Wisconsin, on the map. Sadly, it's not real, but the city has embraced it in a wild way.

Further reading

• Rhinelander Area Chamber of Commerce page on the Hodag

Transcript

Welcome to another episode of the Spooky Sconnie Podcast. This week we'll be talking about a cryptid from northern Wisconsin, known as the Hodag. It is probably one of the most well known Wisconsin cryptids, but it's probably not a real thing, which is kind of sad. To understand the Hodag, we have to understand the man named Eugene shepherd who supposedly discovered this monster. He was born in 1854 in Green Bay and later moved to Rhinelander. Rhinelander is two and a half hours east and slightly north of Green Bay, so it was a fairly large move at the time. He held a ton of jobs, including a few at a logging camp. Um, Rhinelander is a pretty prime area for logging, being kind of up in the north woodsy area.

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Shepherd was a man who loved exploring and he actually named a ton of the lakes up in the area and made maps that we still use today, which is really fascinating. He also claims to have invented Paul Bunyan, but he's also well known jokester and kind of an exaggerator. So who knows? His claim to fame is the Hodag, which is a ferocious mythical beast that's a cross between a wild boar and a hungry alligator. So, supposedly in the early 1890s, Shepherd was walking in the woods just after sunset. You can just see it - picturesque it's beautiful. You just want to like take a walk with someone you love, but then he starts smelling something. There's a foul smell. There's noises in the bushes, and suddenly he comes face to face with this monstrosity with glowing eyes and terrible breath. Apparently what he saw according to the authors of Wisconsin Lore is “The animal’s back resembled that of a dinosaur, and his tail, which extended to an enormous length, had a spear-like end….The legs were short and massive and the claws were thick and curved denoting great strength…From the broad muscular mouth, sharp, glistening white teeth protruded.”

Shepherd later gathered a group of locals and they all formed a search party that allegedly killed a Hodag using dynamite, which feels like the most Wisconsin thing.

There's actually a photo of the men surrounding a hodag's charred remains in a local newspaper. A couple of years later, Shepherd apparently catches a live Hodag. He takes out on tour with him to various county fairs. Visitors would run screaming from the tent after seeing the animal suddenly move inside its cage. It's interesting how he set it up. It's very similar to how he set it up with the 1896 Oneida County Fair where the Hodag was basically the centerpiece. He would charge a dime for a peek, which, like, you were at the very far end of a dimly lit tent and then suddenly the Hodag would move and you would freak out. After that fair, Shepherd quit his job as a timber cruiser and took up one as real estate broker. He then spent his whole life promoting Rhinelander and the Hodag that made it famous. He died in 1923.

Before that, you know, people started hearing about the hodag and the Smithsonian even announced that it wanted to investigate. And that's when Shepherd finally cam